The Punjab and Haryana high court on Wednesday issued a notice of motion to the Punjab education department in an appeal by a candidate challenging award of extra marks for additional qualifications of PhD and MPhil in selection of lecturers of physical education.
The division bench
directed that selections shall remain subject to the decision in this appeal.

Patiala resident Harpreet Singh has challenged the advertisement of January this year for recruitment to 25 posts of lecturer in physical education, where 10 marks for MPhil and 15 marks for PhD (with maximum 20 marks for both qualifications taken together), were to be given. A master’s degree in physical education is the basic qualification for recruitment.

Earlier, Singh’s petition was dismissed by a single-judge bench on July 2 that ruled that there was nothing wrong with awarding of extra marks for extra qualifications. The petitioner’s counsel has now submitted that the question was not of awarding some marks for additional qualifications but of disproportionate and excessive marks. He added that the state government has prescribed extra marks to such an excessive and disproportionate extent that even a gold medalist of the university could not be called for counselling, and any mediocre candidate with additional degrees would score over him.

The petitioner had got 80% marks in master’s degree and he claimed that he should have been at top in the list of the candidates called for counselling. But, due to grant of extra marks for extra qualifications to other candidates, he could not participate in counselling.

Too much weightageA Patiala man has 10 extra marks for MPhil and 15 for PhD (maximum 20 for both taken together) for physical education lecturer job. Master’s degree is basic qualification.

Petition was dismissed by a single-judge bench that ruled there was nothing wrong with awarding extra marks for extra qualifications.

Now, petitioner has again said question was not over marks for additional qualifications but of disproportionate and excessive marks.